Samsung ICR18650-22P batteries

Not long ago, I reviewed some fake batteries, including one that was supposedly a genuine Samsung ICR18650-22P, but had an old production date and arrived almost completely discharged. Today I’m reviewing new, genuine batteries of the same type, so there’ll be measurements as well as comparisons.


Actually, this battery is just the first of four I bought from nkon not long ago. One of my recent reviews even included a photo of the package with the 22Ps. But since I wasn’t ordering them for myself, I got a few different ones from a friend so I could gradually build up my own data.


They look just like the 22Ps I had before, at least the color is the same.


These batteries aren’t anything special. In terms of discharge current, they’re closer to good high-capacity cells, with a maximum of 10 A, but their capacity is only 2150 mAh. Their main selling points are the price and the fact that they’re a brand-name product. Nkon sells them for €1.6 each in batches of 10 to 200.



These batteries were manufactured in the third week of October 2018. They were bought at the end of July 2019, so we can consider them fresh.
There’s also a marking under the heat-shrink sleeve, showing the same date, October 2018 (G2IA).


Dimensions and weight. At this point, the batteries have already been numbered for the tests ahead. You could say that from now on, their paths will diverge :)


For comparison, here’s the previous battery, which someone brought me to check whether it was genuine. Note the voltage it had; it had been stored for a very long time...


On the first, conditioning run, the batteries delivered about 2380 mAh each. They were discharged down to 2.8 V at 500 mA, but this charger usually overestimates the result.


The previous battery was in poor shape: its capacity was just 1960 mAh, although storage had no effect on its internal resistance, as you’ll see later.


The datasheet specifies the battery’s capacity at four discharge currents: 0.2C (the standard rating), 1C, 3C (6450 mA), and 4.6C (10 A). I’ll also test it at 0.5C and 2C.


This is the only battery in the batch with a maximum discharge current of 10 A, so I’m using a ZKE EBC-A10H load for the test.


But first, charging. The datasheet lists two charging modes: 0.5C for 3 hours or 1C for 2.5 hours. Since my charger can’t charge that way, I simply set the charge termination current to the lowest possible value, 50 mA.

The charging curve is a little drawn out: charging at 0.5C takes 2 hours and 22 minutes.


Charging at 1C isn’t much faster: an hour and a half. The graph shows that just under half of that time was spent in CV mode.


Now for what I was able to get out of these batteries.
As I mentioned above, I measured capacity in six modes: 0.2C, 0.5C, 1C, 2C, 3C, and 4.6C (10 A).

The battery delivered its rated capacity of 2150 mAh at 0.2C and 0.5C, with a slight drop in capacity at higher currents.


Battery heating at 3C (6.45 A) and 4.6C (10 A).
Looks great to me: the maximum temperature was just 64 degrees.


The second battery gave roughly the same results, although the readings at 2C and 4.6C were slightly different.


At 3C, it heated up a little more than the first one; at 4.6C, it was about the same.


Here’s a more interesting graph: the new battery is shown in blue, and the one I tested earlier, with the old production date, is shown in red. Discharge currents are 1C (2.15 A) and 4.6C (10 A).
The curves are very similar, but the old battery’s curves are simply shorter because it has less capacity. That means my assumption that it was genuine was probably correct.


Interestingly, the old battery showed an internal resistance of 20.3 mΩ both when fully discharged and fully charged. The new one measured 23 mΩ, even though its resistance and voltage when I received it (the first and fourth photos) were exactly the same. In any case, the later readings were also within the instrument’s margin of error.

1. 4 - just-received batteries
2, 5 - after the "conditioning cycle
3, 6 - after all the tests.


In short, these are good, new, genuine batteries that meet their specifications. They're suitable for laptop battery packs and similar applications, for example.